This conduct is an open, blatant and obvious indication of Judge Elia Cornejo Lopez’s animosity, dislike and disdain for counsel and her desire to not have counsel practice in her court before her, possibly exacerbated by his refusal to purchase a case of Girl Scout cookies from her daughter’s troop.

So wrote a defense attorney, who according to the Brownsville Herald cited this "possibility" in a motion asking the judge to recuse herself from a case. The motion states that the judge has previously removed counsel from acting as an appointed defense attorney, and that on one occasion the judge "directed" counsel to speak with her court coordinator, who told him that Lopez wanted him to buy some Girl Scout cookies. The motion does not go so far as to accuse the judge of demanding a bribe, but suggests that counsel's refusal to buy said cookies "possibly exacerbated" the judge's existing bias against him.

Let us assume that the judge did, in fact, make the cookie request. This is the sort of thing that a lawyer might feel compelled to comply with, even if it was just a "suggestion," for fear of irking a judge. Because of the inherent risk of coercion, intended or not, judges really are not supposed to make these sorts of requests. True, here we are only talking about a few bucks for Girl Scout cookies, but the principle is the same … sort of.

And I guess this really should not have been surprising, but as Jonathan Turley has pointed out, ethics committees in at least three states, including Texas, have in fact considered the specific dilemma of judicial entanglement with Girl Scout cookie sales.

The Texas committee ruled in 1988 that it "perceive[d] no violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct in the described activities" if engaged in by the judge's staff, which is not too far removed from the judge doing it. Oklahoma, however, has taken the contrary position (as it often does where Texas is involved). California, in its wisdom, has split the difference, holding that a judge "may accompany her/his daughter selling Girl Scout cookies, but must not make judicial position known or otherwise use it to advance sales." So no wearing the robe door-to-door or entering any injunctions requiring cookie purchases.

Still, there is a separate question whether this is something you would ever put in a recusal motion, and I would say the answer to that is no. If you have solid evidence of bias, you don't need the cookie allegations, and if you don't have it … well, maybe you should not be filing the motion at all. It's a fairly high-stakes approach, and throwing in a cookie complaint doesn't seem to fit.

Of course, there is another way to avoid this whole dilemma, namely just buying the damn cookies in the first place. It might be mildly unethical for a judge to demand it, but dude! Those are some good cookies.

As I'm sure you all know, Sherman Hemsley, beloved actor best known (and Emmy-nominated) for playing George Jefferson for 12 years, passed away in July. As you may or may not know, he is still in a freezer in El Paso more than a month later because somebody has come out of the woodwork claiming to be his long-lost brother, and is not only challenging the will but also has demanded a halt to funeral arrangements.

Please note that I will be refraining here from any jokes about when George Jefferson may finally be "movin' on up." Mainly because I used that one on Twitter already.

Hemsley signed a will in June leaving everything to Flora Enchinton, who says she knew Hemsley for 20 years and lived with him for the past ten. Enchinton says they were also business partners and best friends. Hemsley was single and had no children, so if what she says is true it's at least plausible he would name her in his will. The challenger, a Philadelphia man named Richard Thornton, claims to be Hemsley's brother, but so far there doesn't seem to be any evidence that this is true. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Hemsley was raised by his mother in Philadelphia and didn't meet his father until he was 14. So it's possible that he had a half-brother he didn't know about, but reports say he was always listed in biographical material as an only child.

Even if Thornton is related to Hemsley, that wouldn't mean he's entitled to anything because he's not in the will. His challenge is most likely based on the possibility of undue influence, since the will was signed after Hemsley was diagnosed and not long before his death. Of course, that doesn't prove anything, since lots of people don't make wills until the last minute (if at all).

The worst thing about this, of course, is that George Jefferson is not being allowed to move on up (dammit! sorry) Sherman Hemsley has still not been properly laid to rest because of it. I'm pretty sure this isn't a normal part of a will contest; according to one report, "Thornton is requesting all of Hemsley's possessions as well as his frozen body," emphasis added, and as a result of that creepy request a probate judge has ordered funeral plans to be stayed.

Here's the deal: even if these two were related, it seems really unlikely they were so close that Thornton just feels strongly that Hemsley should be buried in Philadelphia. He had lived in El Paso for decades, and nobody seems to have heard of this semi-brother during that time. If that isn't why he's doing this, then that part of it seems like an especially heinous kind of extortion. A hearing is set for late September, so unless Thornton relents, which he should, burial arrangements will be delayed until sometime after that.

There are lots of reasons why people should have a will done well before it's necessary, and I'm now adding "so you don't end up in a freezer for months" to the end of that list.

There are plenty of lawyers running around California, but there's likely to be one less in the near future.

Actually, it's not accurate to call John Mark Heurlin a "lawyer" at the moment, which is the whole point of this latest proceeding against him (the fourth or fifth depending on how you count). The first three involved fees. For example, in 2005 he was suspended for (among other things) refusing to turn over settlement money to his client because of a fee dispute. Mishandling client money is one of the cardinal sins of legal ethics, and here it contributed to a lengthy suspension. The order said Heurlin could seek reinstatement after two years, but he never did.

Nor did he ever actually stop practicing law.

This is a problem not just because the bar told him to stop but also because the unauthorized practice of law is a misdemeanor in California (like most places). According to this 2011 order, Heurlin didn't tell his partners he had been suspended, and when they found out (from opposing counsel), they voted to dissolve the partnership and they have all been fighting over the assets ever since. In the course of that fight and related matters, Heurlin continued to hold himself out as an attorney, using letterhead that said "Attorney at Law," signing his name "John M. Heurlin, Esq.," and signing a declaration stating that he was licensed to practice law in California. In 2011, citing this and the prior misconduct, the bar court recommended that he be disbarred.

One aggravating factor, the judge noted, was that Heurlin insisted there was nothing wrong with this, even though he was told by the Court of Appeal back in 2006 that it was troubled by his "cavalier" attitude toward his suspension (which at the time he was referring to as his "disability"). Five years later, his attitude had not improved:

Despite the appellate court's clear warnings and the legal authority it had provided to him, respondent argued before this court that terms such as “Esq.,” and “counselor at law,” “have no meaning in the State of California.”... At trial, respondent cross-examined witnesses about Esquire magazine in an attempt to show that the use of the honorific “Esq.” after the name of a suspended attorney … has no legal significance ….

For those of you thinking, that can't mean what I think it means, oh yes it can. It is a little clearer in the more recent ruling on Heurlin's appeal of the recommendation:

Heurlin further argues that the word "Esquire" has many meanings, including that of property owner and subscriber to the magazine Esquire. This argument is unconvincing because we do not focus on a single usage of a particular word [but rather] the context of the words and the general course of conduct.

(Emphasis added.) Yes, that's true. It's also unconvincing because, for example, no human being on the face of the Earth would ever put "Esq." after his name to indicate that he subscribes to Esquire. Let me know if I'm wrong about this, by all means. Yours sincerely, M. Kevin Underhill, J.D., Esq., Sci. Am., Nat. Geo., Sprts. Ill. (Swimsuit).

Heurlin's position appears to be that he can describe himself as an attorney because he is representing himself, a position that cannot be described as correct. From here, the recommendation goes to the state supreme court, which I am guessing will accept it. Whether or not that will matter to this guy remains to be seen.

I haven't had a formal category for this until now, but since the hoped-for wave of lawsuits by guests at Louisiana hotels who managed to seriously injure themselves while battling insects has not materialized (it seems to havestalled at two), I have reluctantly deleted that category to make room for this one.

Granted, this won't get you out of jury duty entirely, but it will get you out of further deliberations, so I think it counts.

A 20-year-old woman employed this method in Milwaukee a couple of weeks ago, skipping out on deliberations in a felony criminal case because she had tickets to Cancún. The jury had deliberated briefly after getting the case in the afternoon, but when it reconvened the next morning, it only had 11 members. Juror #4 had not returned. But she did call in, which was nice. "She called the clerk from O'Hare to say she was about to board a flight to Cancún," said defense attorney Robert D'Arruda. "But she said it was OK because she'd done her three days and left her vote with the foreman."

Ms. Juror #4 was laboring under a couple of misunderstandings here.

First, the rule in Wisconsin is not three days, it is two days or the duration of the trial. That is, you have to report to the courthouse for two days each year; if not called, you're done, but if you are picked for a jury, you're there for the duration. The rule is not, in other words, "feel free to scatter after 72 hours have passed."

Second, time spent in deliberations is included in "the duration of the trial." That is indeed part of what a juror is supposed to do. In fact, you might say it's the only reason the jurors are there. Maybe the paperwork did not make that clear.

Third (okay, three misunderstandings), one cannot "leave [one's] vote with the foreman" so that one may leave before deliberations are over. See, the idea is that the jurors—oh, forget it. Look, just don't leave before there's a verdict. A verdict. [Sigh.] You can't leave until the guy in the black dress says you can, all right?

But with Juror #4 on her way to Mexico, that left the question of what to do with the case of State v. Outlaw. —Oh, did I forget to mention the defendant's name was Outlaw? Yep.

Spartacus Outlaw.

Which ordinarily might be the whole purpose of this post, except that he was the defendant in a case where a juror went to Cancún and said it was okay because she "left her vote with the foreman." So, what to do with said case? Assuming there were no alternates, at least, I think this'd be grounds for a mistrial, but Outlaw agreed to proceed with just the 11 jurors. The judge instructed them to go forward and not worry about "the runaway juror." It's not clear whether her vote would have mattered, as it turned out; the jury found Outlaw guilty of being a felon in possession of a gun but could not reach a verdict on the other charge, first-degree reckless injury with a dangerous weapon. Maybe his decision to proceed was a good one, maybe not.

As for the decision to bail on the jury, the court official in charge of jury management said it was the first time she'd seen this. "We've had people disappear from a trial," she said, "but not from deliberations." She also said that Juror #4 probably could have avoided the problem had she been honest up front about the vacation, since many judges are pretty lenient about "hardship" excuses, when they can be. "There are about seven million ways to get out of it," the official said. I guess it's a good thing I created a category for it then, but it's also a little concerning that I'm only on #9.

Update: Just checked on this (a little late) and it turns out Juror #4 has already had to face the music. According to the Milwaulkee Journal-Sentinel, #4 was called back into court today to explain. She could have been sent to jail, but although she got a lecture she escaped with a $300 fine. "I don't know if this was worth it," she said afterward, "but I did have a good time in Cancún." For a reason that wasn't explained, her brother also testified at the hearing, and took a philosophical perspective on the whole thing. "I guess it's just one of those situations where, you know, [expletive] happens," he reportedly told the judge. I was going to say that made her the smart one of the pair, but now I think that's not even a relevant question.

I know bar-exam results don't come out until next month, but I'm going to go ahead and suggest that if you are now or have ever been a terrorist, you might want to make other plans anyway. The job market is tough enough as it is.

This is a follow-up to an item I first mentioned in 2009. See "No Getting Around It: Terrorism Will Not Look Good on a Resume," Lowering the Bar (Oct. 8, 2009). At that time, Parminder Singh Saini was hoping to be admitted to the bar in Canada despite the fact that in 1984, he and four others hijacked an Air India flight and held 270 people hostage for the next two days. The future bar applicant fired several shots through the cockpit door (while the plane was still in flight), wounding one of the crew members in the back. He later threatened to "start throwing dead bodies out of the plane" if his demands weren't met. Ultimately, no bodies were thrown, the hijackers surrendered, and Saini served 10 years in prison before being pardoned. He then used fake documents to get into Canada, but was later caught, and in deportation proceedings two separate adjudicators described him as exhibiting an "almost total lack of credibility and trustworthiness" as well as "a continuing ability and willingness to engage in unlawful behaviour."

On the other hand, his grades were decent.

In doing some research for a presentation recently, I checked up on this story and found that the Law Society of Upper Canada did in fact rule that Saini would not be admitted to the bar. The hearing panel said it was concerned by "the seriousness of the crime of hijacking, the deception after landing in Canada and the fact that he is still being described [by the Canadian government] as a person of danger." (Is that anything like a "dangerous person"? They sound a little like they're trying to be politically correct about it.) While Saini did apparently get people to write character references for him, according to the report he "never fully revealed his leadership role" in the hijacking to those people. That is another hit to his credibility, I guess, although I'm not sure his particular role on the hijacking team should make a big difference. Saini was deported to India in January 2010, and a motion to allow him to come back was, even less surprisingly, denied a month later.

It's entirely possible, of course, that he's now working for the TSA, but he ain't practicing law in Canada.

Police in Washington are asking for help finding the "Duct Tape Bandit," a man suspected of four bank robberies in that state. The man is described as being white, in his mid-20s, about 5-foot-10 with a thin to medium build, and with short, light-brown hair. Also, he has a piece of duct tape on his face:

Police caution, however, that the culprit may have removed the tape from his face after the robbery, so I guess that is not really part of the description per se.

While this can't be called a good disguise, it is significantly better than the one deployed by the original Duct Tape Bandit, Kasey Kazee of Ashland, Kentucky (right). In 2007, Kazee was arrested for trying to rob a liquor store after wrapping his head and face in duct tape as shown. The end result is fairly obvious (specifically, he was beaten up, arrested, and later pleaded guilty), but this was never a good idea, at the very least because of the difficulty of removing said disguise during a getaway. As shown, it looks like the Washington copycat (assuming they are two different people, but I think they are) may have learned something from Kazee's example.

Kazee's legacy is also preserved in this excellent remix that incorporates something Kazee apparently said in an interview ("I'm not no duct tape bandit") as well as news commentary, making a pretty good rap song out of it.

As for DTB II, police are also saying that he "may have a tattoo on the inside of his left leg," but aren't saying how they know that or if they are going to ask you how you know that, if you do.

In June, a woman in Aspen, Colorado, was acquitted after a 90-minute trial of charges that she failed to pick up after her dog. A county ranger cited Marion Lansburgh for the fecal infraction in March, but she argued that her husband had retrieved the dung shortly thereafter, and pointed out that the statute did not specify when the retrieval had to occur. A judge agreed. ""[W]e don't want to be draconian," said the ranger, explaining why the county felt it was necessary to take this matter to trial, "but we [also] don't want people walking in a corridor of feces."

Coincidentally, Corridor of Feces would be a really good name for a really terrible band.

Also in June, a 28-year-old New Jersey man was arrested for "creating false public alarms" after he repeatedly called police claiming to be the President of the United States and demanding to speak to Jets quarterback Tim Tebow. Police found the man hiding under some pillows in his mother's closet and took him into custody. Shortly after being released, he angrily threw his summons on the ground, and was then ticketed for littering.

"It would be manifestly unjust ... for [defendant] to serve eight or more additional years in a federal penitentary because he once allowed his llama to escape from its pen," wrote the Seventh Circuit recently, ruling that the "llama incident" should not count under federal sentencing guidelines. Had the llama incident counted, the defendant would have been subject to a 10-year minimum sentence for marijuana possession because it would essentially have been his third strike. But the court held that the charge of llama abandonment should not count because it was more akin to fish-and-game violations, which also don't count.

In other animal-law news, a New York man was fired earlier this month for asking a welfare recipient to watch his pet ferret. This isn't illegal, necessarily, but because the ferret-owner was the recipient's caseworker, a city board found that he had unfairly exploited his position by asking for the favor. Ferrets were (and still are) banned in New York City under the regime of Rudy Giuliani, who once called the president of a ferret-advocacy group "deranged." "This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness," Giuliani said.

Based on these reports, it's still not clear to me what Evans's legal argument in support of his claim really is. As I mentioned previously, his family may have owned the land in Civil War times but apparently no member of the family has even lived in the county since 1931. Even if he could prove the original family ownership without the deeds that were (according to Evans) so lamentably destroyed in the 1901 courthouse fire, I don't see how he could get around the doctrine of adverse possession or, probably, the statute of limitations. Not surprisingly the reports don't go into this much detail, so that is still a puzzle.

They do, however, support a hypothesis that Mr. Evans is kind of a dick.

Reached for comment by a local TV station after he returned to Colorado, Evans said he was sure he had won the case and that he'd be giving the current residents (who he called "occupiers") a full seven days to pack up and get out once the judge agrees with him. He reportedly claimed that the seven-day limit was set by Georgia law, but I'm pretty sure that's wrong. According to this, in Georgia a tenant has seven days to respond to a "dispossessory affidavit"—if they just defaulted, then the sheriff could kick them out, but all they'd have to do is answer in order to get more time. Regardless, suggesting that people who have lived somewhere for decades, one of whom currently has a brain tumor, might have to get out in a week is some evidence of dickishness.

"I'm glad they've enjoyed my family property rent-free all these years," Mr. Grumpy said sarcastically. He said he didn't have a problem about giving people just seven days to get out. "Maybe it's time they get a new perspective on the world," he said.

Speaking of new perspectives, sources report that Evans will be visited by a series of three spirits in the near future, after which he will be seen running around Twiggs County in his stocking cap and joyously telling everyone he'll give them a full 30 days.

The San Jose Mercury News reported Monday that someone had broken into the home of Steve Jobs' family on July 17 and stole a bunch of iStuff including iPods, Macs, and iPads, as well as some jewelry and even Steve Jobs' wallet. It reported this morning that one of the iPads had been located in the comically oversized hands of a local clown, who had been given the device by the thief.

There is no indication that police suspect Kenny the Clown of any criminal activity.

Clown in 2006. (Photo: Jeff Vendsel/Marin IJ)

Clown, who is also known as Kenneth Khan, said that the alleged burglar is an acquaintance who may have fallen on hard times (that's the tragic part), and that he thought his friend had given him the iPad because he was upgrading to a newer model. Apparently there was no engraving or any other identifying mark on the iPad, and he said he had only used iTunes during the few days he had the device and didn't access anything that might have given him a clue to ownership, let alone identify it as Steve Jobs' iPad. Police seemed to accept that, and simply asked for the return of the item.

"It's bizarre; it's really bizarre," said Khan, who in addition to being a professional clown unsuccessfully ran for mayor of San Francisco in 2007. (That's also a little bizarre, if only because he didn't win.) "It would be like getting a football from Joe Montana that was stolen out of his house," he said, and that's true assuming the person getting the football was a professional clown.

"It still hasn't really 100 percent set in for me," Khan continued. "It was Steve Jobs' iPad—literally. If this thing weren't so tragic, it would be comical." (See above.)

If you need a clown in the Bay Area (and why not choose this one?), you can contact Kenny via his Facebook page.